Wednesday, February 23, 2011

I'm sure you guys would have been wondering what rock I crawled under because apart from this LPM post my last post was on the 11th, eons in blogging years. Or maybe you thought I was given as a Valentines Day gift to some Arab sheik in his Bedouin tent in the desert and I'd be presented to him wrapped in a rolled up carpet, starkers except for the jewels weighing down my neck, wrists and earlobes and his manservant named Abbud would roll out the carpet and I'll land at the feet of His Highness of the House of Saud and his piercing midnight orbs will look into my infidel eyes and.........

Well damn

Aaanyway, I was right here in The Grampians, the holy Granite City of Aberdeen slogging away at work. School is a female dog man, driving for two hours on 3rd Mainland Bridge to get to work in the morning and driving for four hours to get back home is nada compared to the torture of studying and essays and exams.....it is well, 11 more months, 11 more months.

Valentines Day was pretty bleh, only brightened by my ginormous Interflora delivery (y'all know Himself could never fall my hand) which I only just threw out today after my room started to smell of chlorophyll. As usual, the by force Princes Charming decided to propose that day, my bbm list was full of pictures of engagement rings and "She said YES!", "My best friend has asked me to share his life", "Together Forever", bla bla bla. I know I love romance and all but vomituous much?

On that note I reach into my vault of True Life romantic stories to bring you a story of a proposal. I went to Law School with the prospective di na nwunye and when we were at school they were just friends, this was just 2 years ago by the way. Apparently they've been friends for 10 years and the girl had been there through all the guys various relationships until December 2010 the scales fell from the bobo's eyes and he fell in love with his best friend, they started dating officially in December, this is 2 months ago o, TWO MONTHS. So, on this momentous day, a few days after Valentines Day, I think it was the 16th or so, it was the girls birthday so the guy organised a surprise party for her with the help of her friends, little did they know they were the ones that were going to be surprised. When the friends got to the super secret location, this dear dear man handed them t-shirts to wear with a letter inscribed on each t-shirt, told them to put on the shirts then arranged them in order. The babes were still wondering what was up and decided to look at each others shirts to fugure out what he was doing and saw that they spelled out WILL YOU MARRY ME *cue aaawwwwwwsssss from all gathered*. The girl appeared, her friends showed them their backs, he got down on one knee and the rest is bbm display picture history. It was all OVER my phone that day, I wasn't even there and I felt like I was wearing a letter shirt too. My friend Winterbottom who gave me the full gist and who is a hardened cynic was spitting hearts and flowers that day, it was something else I tell you.

I actually really like that proposal, surrounded by friends, I'd prefer mine to be private but if people had to be there, my friends and family would be perfect. I hate public proposals, like restaurants or airports or screens at sports games, I'm TERRIBLY shy and I would be so crippled with shyness I might even say no. Or cliche'd proposals like The Eiffel Tower or The Empire State Building, that one sef I'll just vex, how dare you take me where many have gone before me. I'm sure if one even goes to the Eiffel Tower to do the deed, there'll be 20 other men kneeling down and holding little jewellery boxes out to 20 other girls with their hands over their mouths and tears running down their faces and an identikit crowd clapping every night.

*oohh SATC fun fact: Did you know Miranda proposed to Steve...and he said yes. That show was just amazeballs!*

When I was around 10 or 11 my favourite proposal ever was in the book Good Wives, its the sequel to Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, where Laurie proposes to Amy in a little boat on a lake in the middle of the Swiss Alps surrounded by snow covered mountains. He says to her "will we always row in the same boat Amy?" and she says "yes". My little pre-pubescent heart used to throb whenever I read that bit and best believe I read it over and over again.

Then when I was 13 it was from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, which is another book that has a lot of awesome quotes where Mr. Darcy tells Elizabeth Bennet "I have fought against my better judgment, my family's expectations, the inferiority of your birth by rank and circumstance. All these things I am willing to put aside and ask you to end my agony". Delicious! Excepty that "inferiority of birth" bit, I'd have konked the man. And Colin Firth did a fantastic job in the movie, I've had a huge crush on the man since forever, now everyone's jumping on the bandwagon. I HATE when my crush becomes public property.

Another beautiful one was in the movie "A Walk To Remember", I wept like a baby when I saw that movie. Landon says to Jamie "Do you love me?" "Yes" she nodded. "Will you do something for me then?" "Anything" she replied "Will you… marry me?" "Yes". And she had only 3 months to live! Chai, Nicholas Sparks is a heartles , heartless man. His books are soooo sad.

And then my ultimate proposal, Patrick Dempsey to Reese Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama. Maddest proposal ever, Patrick tells Reese they're going out on a date so she gets all dressed up enters the limo and he takes her to someplace like a dark, abandoned warehouse and she's going "where are we, where are we" and suddenly all the lights go on and she sees they're in Tiffany and all the ring cases are lit up and there are attendants everywhere smiling at her, then he gets down on one knee and.....*swoon freakin worthy*

And the cutest ever, Justin Chambers aka Massimo to Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner, wallahi my 16 yr old self would have married him sef if he had told me all that. With the ring in the dollhouse and the broken Italian/English *sigh* "I know I say we just be buddy buddy friends but i wont be true to my heart, be my wife Mary Fiore and i will take care of you and be true to you and like this house I built for your dolls, I will make sure you have a strong roof over your head. and if your answer is yes, know that no-one will ever love you as much as I love you and you will make me the happiest man on the earth". With gbagauns and all the future Dr. Alex Karev delivered a 5 handkerchief worthy proposal scene. I remember I and my friends Molly Ore and Bukky Bamigboye watching that scene and BAWLING. Lordy, the hormones that course through teenage girls sha.

So after all the romantic overload of the week it was only right that I got the hell outta Dodge and go shack up with another lonely female, my boo Molly who I hadn't seen since she got married. She had to be in London and her husband wasn't with her on V-Day so I and my fellow Miss Havisham decided to spend the weekend together.

My loco Mrs. Okafor

Who's this burriful geh?

This night, I, Molly and our friends Kim and Jackie decided to go out and celebrate Molyy's been delivered from the power of darkness (who remembers that book?) and after dinner started the night at Trader Vic drinking Tikki Pukka Pukka's. Now the last time I ingested copious anmounts of this absolutely lethal drink was at Trader Vic in Dubai and my friends and I went from this:

To this:

And this:

This happened in less than an hour, some parts of that night are still very hazy. So best believe that this weekend I respected myself and stuck to one glass.

And this one? WHO IS SHEEE????

Jackie and Molly. Jackie is the creator of Fashion Mavericks and through her faboosh sef I got an invite to my first ever London Fashion Week show! I was soo hegzited like you woudn't believe.

Pictures from the show in my next post, whenever I get round to it cos I'm on a roll tonight, two posts in one night. Knowing myself, I'll be all gingered right now, then for the next two weeks I'd just be like meh. Maybe I'll do the fashion show post now sha and just save it or something, the things I do for my profashionals. Its 11.48pm, I have Oil & Gas Regulation at 9am tomorrow and I'm still up, blogging, smh at myself.

p.s. The beutamagorgeous (well I'm assuming, seeing as I've never met the girl before but she sounds gorgeous) miafarradaily.blogspot.com dedicated her latest blog post to me. Her writing is sooo delicious, check out her blog s'il vous plait. miafarradaily

Watching the Oleku video a few days ago, I saw a t-shirt with the inscription "If found please return to Lagos" and I put it up as my bbm status. It totally encapsulated the way I'd been feeling lately, I missed Lagos like an ache and all the fabulous events and I refuse to even look at Bella Naija because it reminds me of everything I'm missing out on. When the LPM people contacted me about The More Edition, it was like a smack in the face. Me that was a total LPM devotee, I'd discovered my favourite Nigerian designers there, met people there who have become good friends, even got a few opportunities from networking at LPM and I was going to miss their 2 year anniversary, anyway God dey sha. 11 more months and I'll be back home

Wooossaaahhhhh

LPM is turning 2 years old on Sunday, 27th of February 2011, and the team areproud and grateful for the immense support from everyone!!

To celebrate their 2nd anniversary, LPM is giving you the opportunity tomake a significant impact in the lives of hundreds of Nigerians alongsideFreedom Foundation; an NGO, which was set up in 2001 to carry out themandate of pioneering social reformation within communities. It wasestablished as a non-profit organization committed to affecting society byempowering individuals who are affected by various categories of socialand economic disadvantage (drug addicts & sex workers for example). Theindividuals Freedom Foundation rescues are vulnerable. Some were sold bytheir own parents as barter for debts, and from ages as young as 13, theyhave been drugged up to work the streets of Lagos, serving as objects toenrich other men – men who bully and threaten their lives, e-ver-y-day.

With many reasons to give thanks, LPM has decided to partner with this greatorganization to raise funds for the Ladies who reside in Genesis House,where they are fully re-habilitated and nurtured to become better/strongerwomen with strong values in their community. With this in mind they arewondering what MORE can we GIVE? The LPM team thought hard about this, and came upto the an equation that ends up as the BIGGEST Fashion Market Party Lagosis yet to see:

MORE Space + MORE Vendors = MORE Merrier People.

Seeing as it is a Celebration LPM will have a Food Court, selling a varietyof food, drink and confectionary, a lounge area where documentaries of thegreat work being done by the freedom foundation will be displayed, andeven a DJ!

The LPM team trust and thank you in advance for being a part of this positive andimpactful initiative as we all get to make a difference in the lives ofhundreds of Women, who are simply victims of society. Join LePetit Marche (LPM) to GIVE a large percentage of the proceeds raised fromthe rental of stalls and donate to the good work of the freedomfoundation! So please, help make a difference!The LPM team will be taking stall reservations at info@lpmnigeria.com for a largevariety of vendors including:

- Fashion designers- Fabric- Men and women High street fashion- Shoes and bags- Accessories- Food and drink- Home Essentials and more

For this anniversary in February LPM will be hosting you at the DOME,located at the end of Admiralty Way,Lekki Phase 1. The event will start by2.00pm, and run till 9.00pm.

For more information about participating, please send an email to info@lpmnigeria.com

Friday, February 11, 2011

I know many people will beg to differ, in fact i might even get slapped for it, but you know what....its my blog and I can do whatever I like *in T.I. voice*

I think Sex and the City is the greatest television show ever.

There, I said it.

A lot of people have their own epic tv shows, shows like 24, The Wire, The West Wing etc rank as the ultimate to many people. It is the norm to like such things because they are "serious". God forbid you even voice the fact that you love things that are considered girly or romantic or light-hearted, you immediately get typecast as an airhead. Its generally assumed that if you're interested in things which most people consider frivolous such as fashion or entertainment you must be a little bit dumb.

Recently I was chatting with a friend of mine and he said and I quote "By the way, you seem to have a lot of passion for the more artistic bents e.g. writing, blogging, fashion, entertainment etc. Why didn't you get a masters in something closer to your heart. All this academic stuff you're doing seems to be to fulfil all righteousness". I typed back with gritted teeth that luckily for me I am blessed in the sense that I'm interested in a lot of things and have the capabilities to further such interests. one can't be pigeonholed because you like fashion, then you shouldn't go study medicine or something. This is the 21st century for Chrissakes, one track careers are so 1900's, versatility is the new black. If you can be a lawyer, writer, poet, blogger, celebrity entertainment fanatic, label whore, ace homemaker and professional couch potato (I am all of the preceeding by the way) then by all means do it and don't allow people place a tag on you!

Had to have a bit of a rant, I'm actually still chatting with this person right now.

So the fact that I can name all of Brangelina's children and their nationalities (Maddox-Chivan:Cambodia; Zahara-Marley:Ethiopia; Shiloh-Nouvel:American; Pax-Thien:Vietnamese; Knox-Leon & Vivienne-Marcheline:American) and speculate on the impact Emanuelle Alt will have on fashion after replacing Carine Roitfeld at French Vogue does not detract from the fact that I spend hours deconstructing the sonnets of Pablo Neruda or that Purgatorio is my favourite of Dante's The Divine Comedy. It also does not detract from the fact that I can at the same time write a heck of a legal letter and draft contracts and processes and prepare agreements.........

Anyway you get my drift, don't think someone is stunted neurologically just because they'd rather watch a fun, happy show like Sex and the City than 24 where like 37 people can die in one hour, its just gruesome. That brings me back after all the roundabouts and detours I was taking to my initial point...Sex and the City is the greatest tv show ever! It is definitely one of the most quoted shows in history, even more than I Love Lucy. It has influenced the widest demographic ever. What does 24 do for you? Just shows you that everybody hates America, even Americans themselves and if the CTU just leaves Jack Bauer to do as he pleases the damn show will have ended in 30 minutes and Aisha Tyler wouldn't have had to be a double agent and die (I think she was in Season 2, her death was traumatic).

Back to my topic "The Ick Factor", I had a Sex and the City marathon recently, I've watched every single season but I like to go back and I got to S06 E14 and it was named "The Ick Factor". Now this was where Carrie was already dating Alexandr Petrovsky and he was doing all this unbelievably romantic things for her, like writing songs for her, reading her poetry, taking her to the opera, giving her little, thoughtful, awesome gifts, making her breakfast etc.

*sidebar; that episode contained one of the most epic, extravagant, thoughtful gifts ever! Guys buy girls cars, houses etc but this was such a beautiful moment. Petrovsky was reading Carrie poetry and she starting reading a press release in Vogue about an Oscar De La Renta dress and she said that was her kinda poetry and the next day he wants to take her to the opera and she's like "I have nothing to wear" and he's like "why don't you wear this" and hands her a gift box from Oscar De La Renta with the dress in it.......it was awesome. The dress probably didn't cost that much to him, was most likely bupkes to Petrovsky but he knew the gesture would mean so much to Carrie, more than diamonds or anything so he did it*

So anyway, every time he did something romantic Carrie would cringe, like it was all so cliche'd. She'd tell the girls and they'll all go ICK!, well except Charlotte of course. They were so disgusted by the fact that a modern man could be so romantic, only putzes did such silly things. That episode got me thinking, why do people take signs of thoughtfulness and doing things to make your partner happy to mean that you're weak or doing too much or being taken for a ride or just a fool?

Obviously valentines Day is almost here and instead of some people to regard it as a day where you should do your best to make the one you're with happy they take it as a personal challenge to be as disagreeable as possible just so they do not look weak. I know all the lines "I dont need a day to make my girl feel special" bla bla bla. The fact is a lot of girls...and guys take 'silly' things like Valentines Day seriously and their partner dismissing it as a load of rubbish may seem like a personal affront to them. Even if its not Valentines Day, any regular day, instead of the norm of seeing each other or whatever, doing little, thoughtful things can really mean a lot to someone.

Case in point; I have a friend who met her current boyfriend in the most unbelievably romantic way ever, he saw her somewhere and asked around till he got her name. In this era of google and co, simple thing would be to google the babe, from facebook, twitter, linked-in...you can get her details. He could have got friends to give him her number because they had mutual friends but no, this Adonis of a man sat down and wrote her a letter. Not an email mind you, or bbm or text, he used pen and paper, wrote a letter to her and sent it by overnight express asking her to dinner that Friday, with his number in the letter. My friend got this letter and is of course shocked so she called the number and she and my dude made a date for that Friday. Come Friday, they meet up, have dinner, have a wonderful time and its now time for everybody to go home. She says she's headed home, that whereabouts is he headed, he says he's headed to the airport, she's like are you travelling tonight and he's like no, I'm going back home. Turns out the guy didn't live in Nigeria, he flew in that morning to take her to dinner and from dinner went straight to the airport and back to where he came from. I know my friends are tired of this story but I never get tired of telling it. It wasn't a friend of a friend of a friend, it happened before my very korokoro eyes, i read the letter. Honestly, it was the most romantic thing I ever heard a guy did.

So please guys and girls throw caution to the wind this season, do your best to make a fool of yourself and make the one who makes you happy, happy in return, chivalry isn't dead, its just lying drunk in a corner somewhere from too much tequila sunrises. Surprise your special person, you don't have to fly across continents, everybody knows what to do to make another person happy, they just don't do it because they're afraid of losing face or being thought of as schmucks.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Racing to Union Square to exchange a dress I bought for a smaller size (yes I've lost weight and I'm not happy, my old ikebe was so nice), I was suddenly assaulted by Valentine's Day. Not like I'd forgotten that Singles Awareness Day was next Monday, it had just.....I don't know, skipped my mind. Looking around the High Street it was like everywhere had been soaked in rouge.....red window displays, cutouts of huge hearts, red confetti, f%*$ing red dresses everywhere, I was so irritated.

I'm usually an advocate of V-Day, I like it as much as the next loved up person but when you know the day is going to be spent either studying or eating noodles in front of How I Met Your Mother, it kinda puts a damper on things. Now if only there were some way to alleviate my mood, maybe prevent me from being so depressed next Monday.....

Anyhoo, away from all that romance bullshizz.

Would have blogged earlier but my laptop decided to show me who was the madam in our relationship and crashed this weekend, I swear I didn't do anything to it. One minute I'm reading my course handout, next minute....black screen with a single white arrow on it, not moving, nada. My heart nearly stopped. Little things reeaallyy upset me and I spent the whole of Sunday alternating between sleeping and crying, until my absolute darling genius of a brother called from Nigeria after I had sent him dozens of SOS messages and walked me through how to fix it, like step by step. I felt like such a computer person that day, doing things like system restore and filedisc something and soo many other complicated techy type words that I will never remember. I have to say a special thank you to him here on TWP. Mwah! Love you lots you gorgeous man you.

Mon frère

Ooooohhh, before I forget, last week I found out my flatmate Azhanty is an absolute mentaller! I'm actually very used to being surround by crazy people, all my close friends are nuts. Its like every school I attended and all the friends I made there, were more often than not, lunatics.

Case in point;

Pampers Nursery School - I don't remember too much about nursery school but I'm sure I had a crazy friend there because there was once an incident involving I and another girl, 2 boiled eggs, a miniature My Little Pony, a copy of English Primer and lots of puke. I'm a little hazy on the details but I remember both of us being nearly expelled...and seriously who gets expelled from nursery school?

Corona School - Amaka, Uju, Isowei , Michelle U, Onyinye. We were terrors in our little red and white school uniforms and as far as I know, they're all still crazy.

Grange School - Jennifer, Linda. Very dangerous combination.

Queens College - Henrietta, Nneka, Nwabugo, Yoko, Hilda. There's really no need to expantiate on these people, fact is they're all still very, very nuts.

University of Nigeria - Uju, Adaora. It was Eastern madness all up in there.

Nigerian Law School - Ediri, Adanna, Erenma, Anwuli and by extension Amaka and Iroghama. These were the Holy Grail of mad people I'd accumulated over the years.

Listing the above was just to buttress my point that no matter how far I went, wherever I went, mad people found me. Truly I've tried to stay away from insanity, tried to be as normal as possible but still my Chi keeps digging up all these aiders and abetters, so that whatever happened I stayed entertained.

Where was I....yes Azhanty. Now a little while ago this child made a bet with some people a couple of continents away. Bear that in mind, these people were all the way in Mexico, so if she lost the bet they couldn't get to her, didn't stop her still. The bet was over some Mexican football team and sadly Azhanty lost. Ask me the condition of this preposterously stupid bet; the loser will have to shave her head, her whole head, like gorimaps and tings. I was in the kitchen jejely when this girl burst in, asking if I'd witness something. First thing that came to my mind was she was talking about a legal document, babe was like no, she wanted me to watch her shave her head and film it too so she could prove she really did it. I was like "say what now? You wanna shave your head?" And she was like "si" and I was like "Dios mio!"

*Truly I said "Dios mio", I think I thought I was in an episode of one of those dreadful Mexican telenovellas like Catalina and Sebastian*

The guy that was going to do the shaving arrived and I watched horror struck while 18 inches of Mexican hair, colour 4 was peeled off this girls head. I go into debt to buy human hair and someone just shaves it off casually because she lost a bet, I still haven't recovered.

There are no words, none at all

In the video of The Great Mexican Scalping, you can see me jumping in and out of the frame in my Mickey Mouse nightie screaming "STOP!" I'll put it up here once she's done editing it, very traumatic.

In happier news, I decided to sample Aberdeen's nightlife with my friend Amerie last weekend and I still don't know how to describe it. Its a student town, Uni of Aberdeen, Robert Gordon University and Aberdeen College are all here so there are loads of bars, pubs, clubs..whatever catches your fancy really, lots of places to hang out in.....and loads of guys.

Now I don't know whether they were specially bussed in from around the UK to welcome me or something but I swear Friday night, there were like 7 guys to 1 girl, it was a total sausage fest. I was just like, shuuuuu. And they were all so predatory, like practically standing in line to talk to a girl. Let me try and describe this, a guy is talking to you and while he's still doing his spiel, pulling out all his best moves another one just cuts in and starts talking, if that one goes to get you a drink another one cuts in. I was just like WOAH. These guys are starved. Complimentary cards and numbers were flying around like confetti, one of the funniest nights out I've been on in a long while.

Amerie

TWP at Espionage just before the levees broke and the manstorm came in.

That was my week so far, school proper started this week and I had my first lecture today Marine and Coastal Law, tomorrow i have Oil and Gas Regulation.....*sigh* kill me now.

p.s. I don't know if anyone knows this, well I just found out myself, forgive my ignorance but the Scottish 10 pound note has the map of Calabar on its back (or I think its Calabar, maybe its Akwa Ibom). Anyhow sha, its there and a picture of Mary Slessor on the front. I knew she was a big deal in Nigeria and all that but I had no idea her whole stopping twins from being murked made waves over here too.